This book focuses on green mine evaluation. It includes green mine evaluation methods, evaluation content, evaluation indicators, etc. The "Green Mine Evaluation Index" has been issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources of China. In order to promote mining enterprises, green mine consulting service agencies, third-party evaluation agencies and mining administration personnel to better understand and practice the provisions of green mine evaluation indicators, the authors wrote this "Interpretation of Green Mine Evaluation Index". The content of this book specifically includes introduction, prerequisites for green mine selection, score sheet of green mine construction, related knowledge, as well as introduction of specific green mine evaluation items, including mining area environment, resource development methods, comprehensive utilization of ore resources, energy saving and emission reduction, technological innovation and smart mines, corporate management and corporate image, etc. The relevant concepts, relevant laws and policies, implementation measures, inspection points, and materials that enterprises should provide, have been vividly expounded based on the actual situation and specific cases of green mine construction. This book is useful as a reference for managers, engineering and technical personnels, teachers and students from mining enterprises, government departments, consulting services and evaluation agencies, colleges and secondary professional schools.

This Open-Access-Book covers different aspects of the low-carbon energy transformation in a unique manner, with a particular focus on two regions, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The first part of the book provides useful insights on changes and reforms in the energy sector of Bangladesh, while the second part illustrates the low-carbon energy transformation in South Asia and the third part covers lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa. In all of these regions, the energy sector is undergoing major changes, driven by the four D's: Decarbonization, decentralization, digitization, and democratization. Major overhauls are taking place at all levels: The country level, where energy mixes are rapidly changing, the corporate level, where large state-owned and private companies are challenged and new actors are emerging, and the local level, where technical and regulatory change has made citizen engagement and community power an option to replace or at least complement centralized supply structures.

This book offers a comprehensive review of how plastic pollution is affecting fresh and marine waters, and what the current challenges in plastic waste assessment and management in the aquatic environment are. Plastic waste comprises particles with heterogeneous physicochemical properties such as large size-range, different shapes and polymer types with various additives determining their environmental fate and risk. This complexity raises several open research questions which are explored in this book. Examples are the plastic uptake by aquatic organisms, degradation processes as well as sources and sinks in the environment. Readers will discover real case studies of plastic pollution detection and management in different parts of the world, including Asia, America and Europe, which provide an integrated overview of the global scope of this issue. This book and the companion volume Plastics in the Aquatic Environment - Part II: Stakeholders' Role Against Pollution are valuable resources to students, researchers, policymakers and environmental managers interested in plastic pollution and working towards its reduction.

Tourism has become one of the most powerful forces organizing the predatory geographies of late capitalism. It creates entangled futures of exploitation and dependence, extracting resources and labor, and eclipsing other ways of doing, living, and imagining life. And yet, tourism also creates jobs, encourages infrastructure development, and in many places inspires the only possibility of hope and well-being. Stuck with Tourism explores the ambivalent nature of tourism by drawing on ethnographic evidence from the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, a region voraciously transformed by tourism development over the past forty years. Contrasting labor and lived experiences at the beach resorts of Cancun, protected natural enclaves along the Gulf coast, historical buildings of the colonial past, and maquilas for souvenir production in the Maya heartland, this book explores the moral, political, ecological, and everyday dilemmas that emerge when, as Yucatan's inhabitants put it, people get stuck in tourism's grip.

The objective of this textbook is to introduce students and professionals to fundamental principles and techniques and emerging technologies in energy informatics and the digitalization of power markets and systems. The book covers such areas as smart grids and artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed ledger technology (DLT), with a focus on information and communication technologies (ICT) deployed to modernize the electric energy infrastructure. It also provides an overview of the smart grid and its main components: smart grid applications at transmission, distribution, and customer level, network requirements with communications technologies, and standards and protocols. In addition, the book addresses emerging technologies and trends in next-generation power systems, i.e., energy informatics, such as digital green shift, energy cyber-physical-social systems (E-CPSS), energy IoT, energy blockchain, and advanced optimization. Future aspects of digitalized power markets and systems will be discussed with real-world energy informatics projects. The book is designed to be a core text in upper-undergraduate and graduate courses such as Introduction to Smart Grids, Digitalization of Power Systems, and Advanced Power System Topics in Energy Informatics.

This book is devoted to investigating the policy design and effectiveness of financial and market-based instruments to promote energy efficiency financing. The concept of this monograph is to present the latest results related to energy efficiency funding schemes, energy efficiency obligations, voluntary agreements, auction mechanisms, and Super Energy Services Companies (Super ESCOs) in major jurisdictions across the world. The book focuses on financial and market-based instruments as they deliver a price signal, which provides an incentive for firms to invest in innovation or implement more energy-efficient technologies and deliver energy savings while minimizing costs. Such instruments can have significant advantages for the government, supporting the fiscal sustainability of the government's energy efficiency efforts, requiring less enforcement than regulation and according the market flexibility to select the most cost-efficient technologies. This book is highly recommended to researchers, policy experts, and business specialists who seek an in-depth and up-to-date integrated overview of energy efficiency financing.

In the fast-changing policy arena of a country as diverse as India, gauging regional implications of policy shifts is critical but challenging. E3-India is a policy evaluation tool based on the internationally recognized E3ME global model, that allows for iterative quantification of multiple policy options within an integrated economy-energy-environment framework to support wellinformed progressive policy choices at the regional level. This book provides comprehensive coverage of creating and using E3 modeling framework for regional policy analysis, which is available in public domain for the first time in India, addressing existing flagship Government of India policies, including but not limited to the Make in India initiative, Digital India initiative, Automotive Mission Plan, Nationally Determined Commitments under the Paris agreement, and the Atmanirbhar Bharat relief package. These studies have been designed to provide in-depth and lucid insights regarding choices for resource allocation by policymakers, thereby serving as a comprehensive guide for evidence-based policymaking in India.

Economic diversification remains at the top of the agenda for hundreds of regions around the world. From the single commodity economies of African countries and the Caribbean, to the many single industry regions of Europe and North America, as well as the oil and gas rich but volatile hydrocarbon economies. Economic diversification policies have been around for almost a century with varying degrees of success and failure. Economic Diversification Policies in Natural Resource Rich Economies takes a special interest in the policy experiences of a set of different countries that have extractive industries representing significant drivers of their economies and subsequently are significant contributors to government revenues. It explores twelve cases including upper-middle to high income economies such as Canada, Australia, Iceland and Norway, emerging economies such as Latin America, the GCC (Saudi and UAE), Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Russia, as well as the developing economy of Uganda. Each chapter provides a review of economic diversification experiences including policy environment, diversification strategies, desired outcomes, the role of government, and a critical evaluation of achievements. This book is suitable for those who study environmental economics, development economics and resource management.

As China has shifted from a planned to a market-oriented economy, it has adjusted its energy policies accordingly. As a result, the Chinese energy industry has now gone through more than seventy years of transformation. Yet to date no single work has sought to assess the key factors driving these changes and their effects on China's energy security, even though such questions have implications for assessments of the world's energy security. Energy Security in Times of Economic Transition addresses this gap. Juxtaposing a domestic perspective with a wider, pan-energy-industry view, Yao Lixia explores trends in the evolution of China's energy policy since its inception in 1949 and discusses the relations between policy changes and macroeconomic reforms. Then, by employing a new, ground-breaking quantitative framework for evaluating energy security, Yao crucially shows that macroeconomic reform did not improve China's energy security over the first three decades of the reform period but in fact restricted China from developing more effective energy policies. This insight ultimately suggests lines of inquiry that can be extended to research in other countries, especially those in the midst of economic transition. For its detailed history of China's energy policy and its novel, widely applicable methodology for evaluating energy security, this book is a must-read for researchers and postgraduate students in economics, security studies, political economy, and international political economy.

Energy Communities explores core potential systemic benefits and costs in engaging consumers into communities, particularly relating to energy transition. The book evaluates the conditions under which energy communities might be regarded as customer-centered, market-driven and welfare-enhancing. The book also reviews the issue of prevalence and sustainability of energy communities and whether these features are likely to change as opportunities for distributed energy grow. Sections cover the identification of welfare considerations for citizens and for society on a local and national level, and from social, economic and ecological perspectives, while also considering different community designs and evolving business models.

Political words, machinations and policies galore cannot disguise US dependence on foreign petroleum and natural gas to keep the country moving. The ever-changing geopolitical scene complicates the pictures as does US willingness to use military force to keep the spigots open. This new book presents and analyses the current issues in this big-money, big-risk and non-trivial field.

I n 1865, economist William Stanley Jevons published The Coal Question, describing the crucial role that coal played in British economic development. Here, he enunciated what has come to be known as the Jevons paradox, which stated that improvements in resource efficiency leads to greater resource use as the expansion of scale occasioned by lower operating costs overwhelms the savings due to greater efficiency. The implications for any sustainability scenario are enormous and a major theme of this book. While The Coal Question provided the theory that was a precursor to peak oil and resource limits to growth, it was followed six years later by the Theory of Political Economy, the first English-language work of neoclassical economics, which denies the importance of energy as a special commodity. In spite of this apparent contradiction, in this book biophysical economist Kent Klitgaard makes clear that there is no epistemological break between The Coal Question and Theory of Political Economy. Indeed, the Jevons paradox makes little sense in the absence of a behavioral theory grounded in marginal utility, which recognizes the satisfaction that each of us gains as consumers of one more unit of a good or service. Jevons could not solve this paradox in light of his belief that coal mines were becoming exhausted and more expensive to operate, and that there was no substitute for coal. However, he was uninterested in questions of sustainability; rather, he wanted to maintain British industrial and imperial dominance. Did the eventual substitution of oil for coal simply allow us to run through other resources at an accelerated rate? Indeed, the petroleum economy of the 20th and early 21st centuries has presented vastly expanded opportunities for the operation of the Jevons Paradox. This book shows the connections among the different paradoxes in Jevons' work, and exposes the potentially fatal flaws that confound technological solutions to the sustainability challenge.

Oil price volatility has been highly criticized on many fronts, from the top-level official to the average consumer. Authorities for both producing and consuming nations have called for mechanisms to restore order to a chaotic market.The author traces the development of petroleum commodity markets, then examines the quest by producers and consumers for stability in world oil markets. He finds that modest producer and consumer gains can be realized through negotiations that achieve removal of barriers to trade, elimination of hurdles to foreign investment, and strengthening of financial institutions.Verleger reviews previous attempts to stabilize price fluctuations of other commodities and finds that these efforts have invariably failed. He argues that the very size of the oil market makes it unlikely that an effort to stabilize oil prices would succeed. Moreover, he shows that an oil price stabilization agreement would impose large costs on consumers.

Since the European Union's de-regulation policy for electricity and energy suppliers was implemented, new strategic configurations have emerged. Traditional restraints of geographical limitations on energy companies have been partly removed: the diversity at national regulatory and company level means that the European scene is one of a multiplicity of strategic configurations and developments, whilst also being complex and segmented.

This book highlights the strategic and regulatory challenges of European deregulation, with its main focus being on the business strategies within the emerging de-regulated electricity markets; various regulatory implications which are being raised in this new climate are discussed. Some of the central strategic issues facing the electricity industry in its new competitive context are explored and reviewed, with classical themes debated as a prelude to the following empirical investigation of actual business strategies pursued by the electricity and energy industries.

The main section of this work consists of 7 national case studies of business strategies which also include one North and one South American case. These were considered important inclusions as the North American companies are large investors in the European market, whilst the European companies invest in the South American market. The final chapter is a comparison and summary of the national patterns of market structures, business strategies and regulatory styles with a brief look at some challenges to be faced in future.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as an important approach for addressing the social and environmental impact of company activities. Yet companies are increasingly expected to go beyond this. They are now often expected to assist in addressing many of the world's most pressing problems, including climate change, poverty and HIV/AIDS. With increasing expectations placed on business, this book asks if CSR is capable of delivering on these larger expectations. It does so by investigating an industry that has been at the centre of the CSR development - the oil and gas sector. Looking at companies from developed countries such as Exxon and Shell, as well as companies from emerging economies such as Brazil's Petrobras and China's CNOOC, the book investigates the potential of CSR for addressing three important challenges in the business-society relationship: the environment, development and governance.

This book covers available approaches to improving the performance and impact of long-term projections of the national energy sector development. In turn, it introduces an original multi-stage approach to narrowing down the uncertainty range of the input data and resulting projections. Its unique contribution is that it limits the scope for each of the projection timeframe segments step-by-step. This is done in the course of iterative calculations, which employ dedicated methods and other tools to elucidate and solve top-priority problems specific to each time segment. In closing, the book provides a detailed treatment of two essential research problems: 1) long-term forecasting for regional energy markets, and 2) the quantitative assessment of a) the barriers that are likely to hinder energy sector development and b) strategic-level energy security threats.

Can we have energy without pollution?

Although energy and the environment are connected, the question of how the two can co-exist is problematic. How can we go on producing the energy we need without destroying the environment and ourselves in the process? The answer involves not just science and politics, but also morality, ethics, and the meaning and purpose of existence itself. The world's resources have to be considered from both a scientific and a humanistic point of view. In this short but authoritative survey, Dr. Hodgson defines the problem and looks at possible new sources of energy. He discusses the health issue and the destruction of the environment through such causes as acid rain and industrial waste. Reviewing the problems of developing countries and the threat of nuclear weapons, the author ends with an assessment of the risks and rewards of pursuing different energy policies.

Energy and power are playing pivotal roles in social and economic developments of the modern world. Energy and power engineers and technologists have made our lives much more comfortable and affordable. However, due to the demands of the global population on resources and the environment, innovations of more reliable and sustainable energy resources/management with reduced impact on the environment are being increasingly demanded. The Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference (APPEEC) is an annual International Conference that has been held ever since 2009, and the last seven APPEECs attracted many scientists, engineers and technologists from all around the world to attend, providing ideal forums for them to exchange their new ideas and findings. The 8th APPEEC (APPEEC 2016), which is sponsored by Wuhan University and the 1000 Think Tank, was held from April 15 to 17, 2016 in Suzhou, China. "Advances in Power and Energy Engineering: Proceedings of APPEEC 2016" provides cutting-edge scientific and engineering papers of energy and power presented by leading experts in their specialties, and is indeed an excellent reference for energy managers, researchers, engineers/technologists and policy makers to keep up with the latest developments in the fields of Power and Energy Engineering.

This book focuses on water resources and the economic, financial, social and environmental impacts (ICSDWE) of global warming and climate change. It discusses the links between these aspects and presents cutting-edge research, technology, and practice in these fields. The book is a valuable resource for students and researchers at government organizations, academic institutions, and NGOs.

"Energy Budgets at Risk" "(EBar)"(R) provides everyone from facility energy managers and financial managers to government policy-makers and electric utilities program planners with the background information required to understand energy cost, price, efficiency, and related issues important in developing a balanced approach to facility energy risk management. Throughout the book, respected energy economist Dr. Jerry Jackson clearly shows how to reduce energy costs and increase cash flows by using risk management concepts developed in the financial industry.

Energy plays a vital role in economic and social development. The analysis of energy issues and policy options is therefore a vital area of study. This book presents a hierarchical modelling scheme intended to support energy planning and policy analysis in developing countries. The authors introduce the concept of 'Integrated National energy Planning' (INEP), and examine the spreadsheet models, optimization models, and linear planning models which energy planners use. Environmental considerations are also introduced into the analysis. Techniques are then applied to two important energy subsectors, electricity and fuelwood, before problems of integration and policy implementation are discussed. Throughout the book, the authors examine actual practice in developing countries. Illustrative case material is drawn from Egypt, West Africa, Sudan, Pakistan, Colombia, India, Sri Lanka and Morocco. This book will be of interest to students and practitioners of energy planning, and to those concerned with the wider development implications of energy policy.

In the current age of science and technology, our lives have become dominated by countless scientific and technological innovations without which the earth would be a much poorer place. Life as we know would become absolutely bleak and boring without the inventions and advances being made all over the globe. In fact, scientific inventions, discoveries and innovations have ushered in a dramatic revolution in virtually every sphere of life. But at the same time, the skewed use of technology is at loggerheads with the environment. We, and our environment, now face a number of critical challenges and it is in response to this that we wrote this book to raise awareness for environmental issues and related management aspects. With a primary focus on Environmental Management - the rational reconciliation of man and nature, which involves the judicious exploitation and utilization of natural resources without disturbing the ecosystem's balance - it will thus help to improve the relationship between man and environment. Moreover, it offers a wealth of ready-to-use material for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Environment and Water Management. The book systematically addresses a range of key aspects, e.g. scientific principles, methods and ideas, as well as life-long learning skills for students. Further, it provides a solid foundation for applying scientific approaches to environmental problems.

This book covers game-theoretic approaches to analyzing policies for environmental regulation in the power sector. The scope includes operational and investment decisions in imperfectly competitive electricity markets as well as transmission planning and policy design. Given this context, this book synthesizes equilibrium and bi-level modeling to address challenging research questions such as: * How are power-plant operations affected by carbon policy, such as cap-and-trade (C&T) systems? * How does market power in electricity generation affect market outcomes and CO2 emissions? * How does a strategic firm with first-mover advantage manipulate both electricity and C&T permit prices? * How does a strategic firm with first-mover advantage invest in new generation capacity under a C&T system? * How does sustainable transmission planning adapt to an imperfectly competitive power sector? * How should a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) target be revised in an imperfectly competitive power sector? This book includes plenty of illustrative examples to facilitate the concepts' comprehension. It is intended to make equilibrium and bi-level models adapted for policy assessment accessible to graduate students, academic researchers, industry practitioners, and policy analysts.